"Detonate!"
"Target has entered the blast radius!"
"..."
"Hey?! I said detonate—execute immediately! Respond, damn it! What the hell's going on? This isn't the time for heroics or moral posturing!"
South of Constitution Hill — within the cluster of residential skyscrapers.
Bang! In the temporary command post, Militech's Special Operations plenipotentiary slammed his fist against the table, glaring at the recording feed of a heavy armored gunship hovering and decelerating midair. He waited—and waited—as Arasaka's troops began their airdrop. Yet, his own side still hadn't detonated the sub-nuclear bomb. Finally, he couldn't hold it anymore, his expression flickering with rage and confusion as he shot to his feet.
But even as he cursed, something felt wrong.
A mole.
Why had the encrypted channel to his field operations manager gone silent at such a critical moment?
No mere external hack or interference could have taken out communications that fast. A total team wipe in such a short time was statistically near-impossible.
That left only one explanation—there was a traitor.
"Withdraw!"
At that realization, the Militech representative didn't hesitate—he abandoned all subordinates still in combat.
Save yourself first, let others die later. The situation was beyond recovery. Survival came before all else.
Of course, a bit of struggle before fleeing was necessary.
"You—continue coordinating the operation as planned. Detonate the backup MOAB if necessary."
Suppressing the panic between his brows, he turned and patted his trusted aide on the shoulder.
A so-called confidant—someone whose rank and career lived and died by their superior. Pampered and paid handsomely, allowed access to high-end nightlife and corporate indulgences—at the cost of absolute loyalty.
This was what that loyalty was for.
"Yes, sir." The man nodded, taking the keycard his superior handed over. He said nothing, only returning to the console, eyes gleaming coldly as he stared at the holographic tactical display.
That should suffice. Even the White House couldn't fault him for this. What happened next—whether they managed to detonate or not—was out of his hands.
With that thought, the Militech representative activated his mimetic camouflage cloak, slipped through the blast doors, and vanished into the chaos inside the towering superstructure—clean, decisive, without hesitation.
His guards followed close behind.
...
Meanwhile, at the Arasaka Community—
The sky burned crimson, radiating heat like an open furnace.
The stench of scorched metal, flesh, gunpowder, and ozone hung thick in the air.
BOOM!!
"Jonas Collinson—I've heard much about you."
With a howl of rushing wind, Vela dropped from above, landing hard. The sharp tip of her spear-gun flashed through the haze, tearing a crimson trail across the smoke and concrete dust.
Clang!
Steel clashed, gunfire cracked, metal burned, and blood spattered.
With a single swing of her arm, she smashed the hunchbacked agent across the room. He crashed into the wall—thud!—and slid down lifelessly.
Splatter. Twisted chunks of flesh painted the rubble red.
Vela stood atop a flaming wreck of a heavy drone, flicking the blood from her [Black Abyss V] gun-blade. The [Warframe]'s V-shaped visor glowed faintly with cold, crimson light—hawk-like eyes locking onto the blond, middle-aged man hiding behind a load-bearing wall—Jonas Collinson.
A senior FIA agent. A member of Solomon Reed's squad during the Metal Wars (2069–2070). A blond, blue-eyed, old-school American redneck—rough around the edges but resilient, impulsive, and stubbornly defiant.
He despised the New United States with burning hatred. The chance of surrender? Practically zero.
During the signing of the first Alvin Accords, he had assassinated Murata Ozuru, the Arasaka admiral commanding the carrier Kujira.
He was later captured and interrogated by the Special Operations Division—but rescued at the cost of Solomon Reed's life.
Reed gave up his own escape slot to let Collinson flee Night City.
Reed himself was betrayed and captured.
...
As Vela recalled the Intelligence Bureau's archived mission logs, her thoughts aligned.
"Reed's decision to let you escape was the greatest mistake of his career."
Catching several curving, tracking caseless rounds midair, she crushed them with a crack! between her gauntleted fingers, speaking slowly.
The bullets struck her intermittently flickering honeycomb-patterned crystalline barrier—sparks and ringing metal the only result. Beneath her mask, her indigo pupils flickered with data streams—and something deeper, faint, and unknowable.
Multitasking seamlessly—manual combat, network intrusion, and Geass synchronization—all at once.
The power of the Geass—though the distance was considerable and the environment chaotic—still allowed Vela to pluck at the target's negative emotions like plucking taut wires, agitating him, making him irritable and reckless.
Bang!
"You bitch!" Jonas's cybernetic arm smashed into a crate, the impact booming. "You have no right to say his name!"
Vela tilted her head slightly. "Is that so?" Bang! With a shot, she blew apart a winged drone buzzing toward her, speaking calmly, "If it had been Reed who escaped Night City instead of you, perhaps I would've treated your Federal Intelligence Agency with a bit more caution."
As expected, facing mockery from the enemy who stood upon the bones of the captain who had once saved him, Jonas lost control for an instant. His blood boiled; hatred bubbled inside his chest like molten lava, surging up his nerves and into his brain.
His vision went red, his breathing ragged; his rising blood pressure overwhelmed his ocular implants, sending their display haywire.
"Director Collinson, calm down—ahhhhh!"
An FIA agent nearby tried to intervene, but his cyber defenses were breached. His ICE countermeasures collapsed, and in a flash, a Daemon Virus stormed through his entire cybernetic system. Lightning and fire erupted from the chips behind his ears, the neural jack at his neck, and his implanted eyes.
In seconds, what had been a human was reduced to a half-charred, twitching corpse—its brain sizzling to medium rare.
At the same time, behind Vela on the battlefield, David Martinez of the Presidential Protection Bureau advanced forward with the air-dropped security team.
Not long ago, he and the surviving members of his SP security squad had rushed from the ruins of Konpeki Plaza to Arasaka's coastal district, linking up with the airborne assault forces suppressing the rebellion. As the only surviving combat-capable elite from his unit, David was, naturally, reassigned to assist in the final purge at Constitution Hill.
"Hrahhh!" David roared, swinging his thermal axe in a low, horizontal arc, forcing down the barrel of a Militech ACPA's energy cannon. Whoom! A beam of red heat tore through the wall beside him.
In the same motion, he lunged forward, slamming his [Oni 4-B Type] power armor's shoulder into the enemy unit, ramming it straight into the wall.
BOOM! Dust and debris exploded outward.
The impact hit like a runaway freight truck—fast and brutal. Reinforced beams snapped; plaster and steel peeled away.
Coughing through the dust, David rose from the rubble.
At his feet, the enemy ACPA's chest plate was completely crushed in. Fractured armor plates bent inward; torn cables sparked and hissed.
Twisting his wrist, David brought his thermal axe down cleanly.
Shhhhk. The sound of a blade cleaving flesh and metal alike.
Once he confirmed the kill, David advanced slowly, right hand gripping the buzzing thermal axe, left arm's integrated twin heavy-launcher firing intermittently to suppress targets. The villa around him was a wreck—walls shattered, smoke everywhere, the air filled with the roar of gunfire, screams, and explosions.
Tap, tap.
Three fully armed cyber-ninjas emerged from the side, their armor flickering with optical camouflage. Their suits were soaked in blood. One of them, an experienced operator, pointed a massive thermal katana—customized for power-armor use—toward a half-collapsed basement entrance.
"Our hackers breached their network. According to intel from the inside agent, all managers with access to the detonation keys have been neutralized—net-locked and decapitated. Still, don't get sloppy. Sweep every corner," he said through the comm link.
"Squad leader, who's that guy? Does Miss Vela plan to capture him alive?"
"Jonas Collinson. The idiot who assassinated our naval admiral right after the First Alvin Accord. The boss knows what to do with him."
"Hah, I bet when Vice Admiral Katsutoshi Murata of the Seventh Fleet hears this, he'll be bawling at Miss Vela's feet, swearing eternal loyalty."
The brief exchange ended; the squad continued their sweep.
As the youngest rookie among them, David listened quietly to the veterans' conversation, piecing together the fragments of inside intel.
The more he heard, the more his gaze drifted toward Vela—
The silver-armored Angel of Death of Arasaka was closing in step by step on the struggling "Uncle Sam."
Empty shells clattered to the floor. Bang, bang! Two flashbangs detonated alongside smoke and EMP grenades.
Jonas screamed—a raw, feral sound—and turned to bolt.
He wasn't stupid.
Even though witnessing his FIA agents die so miserably enraged him, and the enemy's mockery of his fallen captain almost crushed him beneath the weight of hatred, losing his temper didn't mean losing his mind. Jonas knew exactly what he was capable of.
Retreating was impossible.
Then he would gamble everything.
His expression twisted, eyes blazing with fury.
Since communication was down, network links were jammed, and his neural port was malfunctioning—remote detonation of the sub-nuclear bomb was out of the question. So he'd do it manually. If he was going to die, then he'd make sure Vela, the one who killed Reed, went down with him.
Her rank, his rank—it didn't matter. Dying together meant no loss.
Unfortunately, the traitor hidden among his ranks was beyond his reach.
"Cover me!" he barked into the radio, holding his breath as he overclocked his [Peregrine Sandevistan Type-6]. The jets on his back roared to life, launching him forward. He dashed, slid, rolled, and charged headlong toward the underground garage ramp, gripping a DB-2 Satara electromagnetic shotgun, eyes locked dead ahead.
Three seconds.
If he could just reach the MOAB bomb's detonator module and insert the key, he could manually override the emergency lock within three seconds.
Clang! His steel boots slammed against the grating.
The control terminal was only a few meters away—amid the smoke and dust, the scattered bomb casings, cables, propellant canisters, and portable consoles.
Jonas clenched his jaw.
Let's all die together!
He screamed.
But in that instant, a wave of dread swept through him.
His pupils contracted sharply, the display on his corneal interface flickered into static, and a flood of error codes and warning prompts filled his vision.
The next second, his sprinting legs gave out beneath him. His body seized mid-motion—like a drunk stumbling, his legs tangled, and he went crashing to the floor, tumbling forward in a shower of sparks.
"Cough... cough! Damn it!" Jonas groaned, lifting his head with effort. His rugged face was split and bloodied from the fall; his heavy subdermal armor gleamed red beneath torn flesh.
He couldn't breathe. His vision swam.
He knew—his cybernetic operating system had been locked out.
"Ugh..." Jonas struggled, his hand trembling as he reached for the nearby control terminal.
Too late.
A black-and-red spear shot through the air.
SHNK!!
The sharp crack of metal piercing flesh echoed. Sparks, blood, and debris erupted in a violent burst.
The [Black Abyss] impaled Jonas through the right shoulder, embedding deep into the concrete floor—pinning his raised arm and torso in place.
"Ghh... bitch..." Blood bubbled from his mouth. His reinforced lungs were failing, and he could only wheeze like a broken bellows.
Click... clack.
Vela stepped behind him, crouched briefly, and retrieved the keycard from his belt.
She didn't bother with banter. Instead, she stomped hard on his still-intact left arm.
Crack! Jonas screamed as his arm shattered at the root—exoskeleton and all.
Then, gripping the shaft of the [Black Abyss], Vela twisted and pulled, wrenching it free with a metallic tearing sound. Blood spattered in an arc.
Jonas's right arm was ruined—its exposed bundles of electro-muscle fibers and neural cables sparked and leaked synthetic fluid.
Finally, crushing the motors of his exoskeleton and slicing through his knee joints, Vela cast a glance toward the dormant bomb array, smirked coldly, then turned, dragging Jonas's broken body by his armor across the floor, out of the garage.
Beneath the [Warframe] visor, Vela's eyes still glowed with streaming crimson data.
[Vela: Good work, So Mi. ICE breach complete. Move to cleanup.]
[Song So Mi: Understood.]
Though the Geass's effects were far weaker in the Cyberpunk world compared to its native Code Geass world, using herself as an anchor point to disrupt an enemy's emotional stability and judgment in close combat proved consistently effective. That was Vela's conclusion.
By amplifying Jonas's aggression, she'd pushed him to overclock his Sandevistan, diverting all power from his CE processing circuits to his cybernetic limbs—leaving his defensive computations vulnerable. The result: a perfect opportunity for capture.
"Commander, the area is secure."
As the supreme director emerged from the wreckage, several elite agents from the Presidential Protection Bureau jogged up to report.
Vela nodded. She tossed the half-dead Jonas—barely breathing, on the brink of death—onto the ground before her subordinates. "Keep him alive. Have R&D strip the Militech hardware off his body. Also, call in the bomb disposal team to deal with the—"
Before she could finish—
"President Russell, ma'am!"
The voice arrived before the man did. Hearing it, Jonas—who had been groaning weakly, his gaze dim—suddenly snapped his eyes open wide, bloodshot and furious.
"Anthony Gilchrist!!" His roar tore from his throat like snapping steel cables.
Anthony, who had jogged up briskly, froze for a second before swearing. "You stupid son of a bitch, you're still alive?!"
"Motherf—traitor! Dog bastard! Corporate-sucking wh—" Mmmph! His curses turned to muffled noises.
Vela waved her hand. The medic kneeling beside Jonas immediately pressed a chloroform-soaked cloth over his face, administering a heavy sedative. Within moments, the man went limp and silent.
Peace returned.
Only then did Vela turn her gaze to Anthony—a man with short, slightly curled black hair, an older face, dressed in a dark combat suit.
Honestly, she hadn't expected Yorinobu to have his eye on him too.
Yes—back when Vela had planted moles within Militech, Yorinobu, as the latecomer, had done the same while working with Myers. During that collaboration, he'd investigated a number of Militech employees—perhaps to preempt Myers' inevitable betrayal, or perhaps out of paranoia—and sought inside contacts.
Among them, Anthony had been highlighted.
Using Arasaka's growing influence in Night City—thanks in part to Vela's success—Yorinobu's agents had investigated his background.
And they found plenty.
Anthony had worked with the Maelstrom gang multiple times, fencing stolen Militech tech for personal profit—a greedy rat. Seeing that, Yorinobu sent his envoys to threaten and bribe him into leaking internal intel.
This was even documented in Yorinobu's posthumous attachment No. 2: [Militech & NUSA Communication Logs].
What Yorinobu didn't know was that Vela had been aware of this from the start. She had long known about this breach within Militech—and had laid her own traps accordingly.
In fact, back when she was still head of the Special Assault Team in the Arasaka Security Bureau, during the massacre of the overreaching Maelstrom gang, she had already set her sights on Anthony.
Later, she successfully established contact, covertly exchanging favors and resources.
Then, when the time was right, she revealed her identity—blackmailing him gently:
"Mr. Gilchrist, I assume you wouldn't want your 'private dealings' with Arasaka's rising star to become known to your rivals—say, Miss Stout, perhaps?"
Anthony caved.
Over time, as Vela's position rose and Arasaka's dominance over the NUSA battlefield grew, his nervous submission gradually evolved—from compliance, to acceptance, to full loyalty.
Vela had never issued him orders—until now.
Once she learned that Anthony, as Senior Operations Manager of Militech's Night City branch, had been assigned to the Special Military Action program, she sent him a Daemon Virus package.
Now, her foresight had borne its sweetest fruit.
That was what she called wisely using her "monkey-tier future sight."
"President Russell? Lady Arasaka?" Anthony asked cautiously when he saw her pause mid-thought. "Is there... anything you require of me?"
"Relax." Perceiving his unease, Vela chuckled softly and patted his shoulder. "You've done well. And I'm not Myers—Arasaka never mistreats its loyal servants."
"But now's not the time to celebrate. You're capable, Anthony—help our people double-check the area. Make sure every threat is erased."
She emphasized the word our.
Then she turned and left.
Vwoooosh—BOOM!
Grass and gravel exploded beneath her as Vela launched into the air. Behind her, the [Warframe System]'s wing-like antigrav thrusters unfolded, a shimmering halo of refracted light forming behind her head.
Explosions flared across the Arasaka Community below, lighting her silver-white armor in shifting sparks and reflections.
Vela looked down at the chaotic battlefield: the advancing Arasaka riot troops, the rampaging mercenaries of Night City, the infighting rebels of Yorinobu's faction, the retreating Militech forces, and the opportunistic scavs lurking like vultures.
This farce born from Yorinobu's idealism—it was time to end it.
With a flick of [Black Abyss], she spun the weapon, the gun-blade glinting as she dove toward the most intense zone of combat.
The authority Yorinobu had shattered—she would restore.
And that was why she had unveiled the luminous halo above her head.
She wanted spectacle—flair—attention.
Now was showtime.
Featuring: "Vela Saves the World."